How Include Static Files to Setuptools - Python Package

How include static files to setuptools - python package

As pointed out in the comments, there are 2 ways to add the static files:

1 - include_package_data=True + MANIFEST.in

A MANIFEST.in file in the same directory of setup.py that looks like this:

include src/static/*
include src/Potato/*.txt

With include_package_data = True in setup.py.

2 - package_data in setup.py

package_data = {
    'static': ['*'],
    'Potato': ['*.txt']
}

Specify the files inside the setup.py.

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Do not use both include_package_data and package_data in setup.py.

include_package_data will nullify the package_data information.

Official docs:

https://setuptools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/userguide/datafiles.html

How to use static files included with setuptools?

change foobar.py to:

import os
import pickle

def out():
    with open(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), "pickle_files", "test.p"), "wb") as f:
        pickle.dump({"hello": "world"}, f)

def f_in():
    with open(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), "pickle_files", "test.p"), "rb") as f:
        d = pickle.load(f)
    print(d["hello"])

when you launch it from other place you have different starting point for decoding path.

including folder and files inside a Python package

As this question answers:

There are 2 ways to add the static files:

1) Include_package_data=True + MANIFEST.in

A MANIFEST.in file in the same directory of setup.py, that looks like this:

include src/static/*
include src/Potato/*.txt

2) Package_data in setup.py

package_data = {
    'static': ['*'],
    'Potato': ['*.txt']
}

Specify the files inside the setup.py.

Including static data in setup.py (setuptools)

I solved the problem by processing the static files separately, not using setuptools.

from sys import argv
try:
    if argv[1] == 'install':
        from os.path import join
        from distutils.sysconfig import get_python_lib
        from shutil import copytree
        OrigSkeleton = join('src', 'skeleton')
        DestSkeleton = join(get_python_lib(), 'cumulus', 'skeleton')
        copytree(OrigSkeleton, DestSkeleton)

except IndexError: pass

Include static files in installed directory

Your developemt directory structure is wrong. It must be the same as installed package:

/mypackage
    setup.py
    MANIFEST.in
    /mypackage
        __init__.py
        code.py
        /static
            app.js

setup.py:

setup (
    packages = ['mypackage'],
    package_data = {
        'mypackage': ['static/app.js']
    },
    ...
)

Now generate distributions: python.setup.py sdist bdist_wheel

Including non-Python files with setup.py

Probably the best way to do this is to use the setuptools package_data directive. This does mean using setuptools (or distribute) instead of distutils, but this is a very seamless "upgrade".

Here's a full (but untested) example:

from setuptools import setup, find_packages

setup(
    name='your_project_name',
    version='0.1',
    description='A description.',
    packages=find_packages(exclude=['ez_setup', 'tests', 'tests.*']),
    package_data={'': ['license.txt']},
    include_package_data=True,
    install_requires=[],
)

Note the specific lines that are critical here:

package_data={'': ['license.txt']},
include_package_data=True,

package_data is a dict of package names (empty = all packages) to a list of patterns (can include globs). For example, if you want to only specify files within your package, you can do that too:

package_data={'yourpackage': ['*.txt', 'path/to/resources/*.txt']}

The solution here is definitely not to rename your non-py files with a .py extension.

See Ian Bicking's presentation for more info.

UPDATE: Another [Better] Approach

Another approach that works well if you just want to control the contents of the source distribution (sdist) and have files outside of the package (e.g. top-level directory) is to add a MANIFEST.in file. See the Python documentation for the format of this file.

Since writing this response, I have found that using MANIFEST.in is typically a less frustrating approach to just make sure your source distribution (tar.gz) has the files you need.

For example, if you wanted to include the requirements.txt from top-level, recursively include the top-level "data" directory:

include requirements.txt
recursive-include data *

Nevertheless, in order for these files to be copied at install time to the package’s folder inside site-packages, you’ll need to supply include_package_data=True to the setup() function. See Adding Non-Code Files for more information.

How to include package data with setuptools/distutils?

I realize that this is an old question, but for people finding their way here via Google: package_data is a low-down, dirty lie. It is only used when building binary packages (python setup.py bdist ...) but not when building source packages (python setup.py sdist ...). This is, of course, ridiculous -- one would expect that building a source distribution would result in a collection of files that could be sent to someone else to built the binary distribution.

In any case, using MANIFEST.in will work both for binary and for source distributions.

Accessing static files included in a Python module

dir() won't tell you anything about static files. The correct way (or one of them, at least) to get access to this data is with the resource_* functions in pkg_resources (part of setuptools), e.g.:

import pkg_resources

pkg_resource.resource_listdir('glm_plotter', 'templates')
# Returns a list of files in glm_plotter/templates

pkg_resource.resource_string('glm_plotter', 'templates/index.html')
# Returns the contents of glm_plotter/templates/index.html as a byte string

Setuptools - shipping additional files

You'll have to use a MANIFEST.in file to list data files that you want included in a source distribution. package_data is only consulted for binary distributions (a great shortcoming).

See The MANIFEST.in template in the distutils documentation.

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